Mubi

It’s probably safe to say that Sylvia Chang‘s Love Education is the kind of film that is impossible to get made in America at this point in time. A quiet, patiently observed slice-of-life drama just isn’t in the works from US studios; they would turn this kind of material into a broad farce aimed squarely at old folks or, conversely, deliver an indie imagining that would play up the darker elements of the story, a kind of Strindbergian psycho-drama or something. Chang…

Agniszka Smoczynska’s The Lure was not, by most metrics, a hit, but it wasn’t a failure either; it made a small amount of money in its theatrical run, garnered positive critical notices, and eventually found its way to a place in the Criterion Collection’s catalog.…

The narrative framework of Helena Wittmann’s Drift revolves around two women, each going their own separate ways after spending some time together in northern Germany. One of the women intends to return home to Argentina; the other, who Wittmann’s film spends most of its time with, sails…

Brothers of the Night concerns a loose network of young Bulgarian men who, unable to find work in Vienna, instead prowl the city streets selling their bodies. The opening scene of Patrice Chiha’s film locates two young hustlers in a shadowy concrete overpass, one sloshed…

“Seen through the wrong end of a telescope, an ordinary scene becomes an ancient story. No, it’s not nostalgia! It’s heartache for all that’s lost.” This quote from Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novel Hanagatami, a coming-of-age story set in a coastal village during Japan’s pre-WWII invasions…

The first feature from French-Algerian visual artist Neïl Beloufa is an odd hybrid of comic arthouse thriller and Brechtian installation piece. Set in a shabby 1970s-chic Parisian hotel, in present day — with protestors facing off against riot police outside in the street — Occidental immediately establishes its atmosphere…

In the early 1980s, as the West was succumbing to the avaricious allure of Reaganism, Taiwan was undergoing a profound, progressive transformation. The country began to democratize in the wake of the Zhongli incident, and became a global economic power, as trade unions proliferated…

A leading light of China’s Sixth Generation movement, Wang Xiaoshuai was at the vanguard of a 1990s cinema that dared to grapple with the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen. Films like 1994’s The Days and 1997’s Frozen captured the fractured psyche of a generation that thought they were a…

The Wild Boys opens with a shimmering black-and-white title card, an homage to Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks, and voiceover that soon takes the viewer back to the violent origin of this delirious, gender-bending tale. Fueled by an impulse dubbed only “TREVOR” (which may stand in…